I recently wrote about what looks for all the world like a clear-cut case of plagiarism by The Forward Cabin, a BoardingArea blog. Last week our esteemed leader Matt contacted Randy Petersen, the owner of BoardingArea, to express our concerns.
We’re still waiting back to hear from Randy. In the meantime, I reached out to the good folks at First2Board, another collections of points and miles blogs unaffiliated with either Saverocity or BoardingArea, to see if they’d ever had any issues with folks plagiarizing their work. My reasoning was that anybody who plagiarizes this sort of stuff won’t do it just once; they’ll keep doing it again and again until external events cause them to reconsider their choices.
And sure enough, they actually did have a problem just a few months ago with our favorite blogger:
Jamison, in case you didn’t know, does the Points Summary blog over at F2B. The subject matter of the posts was a promotion American Airlines was running where you could receive 7,500 AA miles for test-driving a Cadillac. Jamison’s post, on October 17, 2014, was entitled “How to Receive 7,500 AAdvantage Miles Without Test Driving a Cadillac”. The Forward Cabin post, published October 20, 2014, was called “How to receive the 7,500 AA miles WITHOUT test driving a car”.
How to get 7,500 AA miles without a test drive is not a popular blogging topic. That, plus the timing, leads me to think that Jamison has a point. What do you think?
I think it stinks someone stole writings.
That said, heres one solution:
All these bloggers should just stop yammerin and blabbering about all day long. Cut it back to like 1/90th of the ammt of easily accessible online chatter we have now.
Then theres be less to steal
And gigs would live longer.
Ive gone zero dark thirty myself. I aint talkin deets to no one no more save about 20-25 people with whom I converse regularly off any public board. The stuff we do lives because of that and no one takes it or fks it up.
I think Matt needs to look Randy in the eye and say in his best southern drawl “You, Sir, have offended my honor. I demand satisfaction.” Then the glove is thrown, and everyone gets the best DO ever. Oh and maybe Boarding Area should investigate the allegations, and if necessary discipline their alleged repeat plagiarizer rather than lower their standards or something. But the important thing here is the gentleman’s duel.
Is it this James Larounis plagiarizing again, or someone else?
Larounis … and this actually was prior to the copy/paste job of pfdigest.
I did read about the Cadillac miles promo–and how to get them w/o driving the car–on more than one blog. None of which was James “The Plagiarist” Larounis’s blog. (We should just start calling him that, don’t you all agree?)
The titles of the two pieces are similar enough to raise eyebrows. But without knowing what the actual blogposts were, and how similar, he could have just stolen the title. Bad enough, IMO, but not to the level of lifting an entire post.
This doesn’t seem that hard: If James Larounis wants to aggregate travel and credit card news that he’s read somewhere else, fine — just say where the information came from. That seems like the professional and honorable thing to do.
But passing off other people’s ideas as your own and making money off of them … that just seems ethically and morally indefensible.
Trying to pass things off as yours by copying something and changing a word here and there is worse.
Why is this apparently obvious to everybody except James Larounis?
I find it funny that MM hates blogs that give out “secrets” yet he frequents and reads these blogs as well. If you hate them so much why you reading them? Oh wait that’s right because they provide information you use. Get a job you TROLL.
Good grief…
These aren’t deeply researched academic pieces. They’re a few hundred words worth of repackaging of deals released by companies.
Get over it. Who is going to check the dozens of other blogs before writing anything.
Don’t be a dick.
Comment of the year so far for 2015. Happy New Year bud!
Found another who is like this Forward Cabin guy.
Check William Charles.
He just HT’s a username on Flyertalk but doesn’t link to the actual thread or post because…he lifted it verbatim.
http://www.doctorofcredit.com/how-to-get-a-100000-point-offer-for-the-amex-platinum-business-card/
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/22655300-post32.html
The original post on FlyerTalk:
“1. I called 1-800-971-6736, and chose option #1, “Apply for a new card”
The conversation then went like this:
Me: I would like to apply for the Platinum Business Card. However, a few months ago I got an offer that has since expired. I was wondering if I could still apply and get the bonus that was offered to me?
CSR: Let me see what I can do for you. Do you still have the RSVP code?
Me: No, but I remember the offer. It was for 100,000MR after spending at least $10,000 within the first three months
CSR: That should be no problem. As a courtesy I can extend you that same offer whereby you would get 100,000MR after spending $10,000 or more within the first three months.”
His post:
“Call 1-800-971-6736
Choose option 1, “apply for a new card”
You’ll be redirected to a customer service representative.
You: “Hello, I’d like to apply for the American Express platinum business card. A few months ago I received an offer but it has since expired, I’m wondering if it’s possible to still get this bonus” Them: “Do you remember what your RSVP code is?” You: “No, but I do remember the offer was for 100,000 membership rewards” Them: “Ok, I’m able to extend this offer to you as a one time courtesy. You will earn 100,000 membership rewards points when you spend $10,000 within three months””
Head shakes that people get away with this stuff without being called out. We have contributed to places like FlyerTalk for years, and things like this kill deals for those of us who put in the hard work.
I’ll let DOC speak for himself but in my experience he’s been good about attributing and giving credit where credit is due. I agree that it would have been better to link to the thread, but given his overall record I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He had an opportunity to make good in July when someone specifically called him out on not linking directly to the post. Instead he glossed over claiming mentioning the username and ‘FlyerTalk’ was enough.
This omission is deliberate.
What he lifted was half the content of that post, which is the definition of plagiarism, regardless of whether he cites or not.
“Dl says:
July 1, 2014 at 2:58 pm
Dude,
If you are going to quote almost verbatim the steps, at least have the common courtesy of doing a HT to the original post, or at least the thread you nicked this from. This is why people have such a low opinion of bloggers
Reply
William Charles says:
July 1, 2014 at 6:23 pm
We always give credit where credit is due. You must have missed this part of the post: Hat tip to ukinny2000 from flyertalk”
I guess we’ll have to disagree on this one. Plagiarism is taking other people’s stuff and presenting it as your own. He didn’t present anything as his own; he stated it came from flyertalk.
You may want to be more careful – here is the definition
“copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on “fair use” rules)”
http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism/
That post mentioned above definitely copies the entire Flyertalk post. Not an attribution issue. It’s plagiarism.
Not surprised…hardly a bastion of integrity when you’re blogging about this kind of gaming. Why would anyone trust?
If THAT’s the definition, then there goes a big portion of the internet…
My apologies, I usually link directly to the thread rather than just the flyertalk home page. When somebody called me out in the comments I saw the link to the username and flyertalk & wrongly assumed that it linked to the actual thread.I’ve updated the post now to link to the actual thread.
I was never trying to represent this content as my own – I just thought people would find the tactic useful. Going forward how would people like this type of content displayed? Am I better off putting it in quotations and then linking directly?
P.S I was even giving credit on Flyertalk when talking about this offer in other threads (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23972776-post59.html).
So how did all of this play out, PFDigest? The plagiarism thing with James Larounis? Any resolution in sight?